Opinion

The FINAL straw for millenials?

This may be the beginning of the end of Washington as we know it.

A rising generation of pragmatic, non-ideological voters is appalled by the dysfunctional leadership of their parents and grandparents. History may consider October 2013 their breaking point.

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas knows that the GOP can’t overturn ObamaCare because Republicans only control one half of one branch of government. And yet, Cruz and other Tea Party Republicans pledge to do the impossible, presumably to build e-mail lists, bank accounts and fame.

On the other side of the GOP divide are conservatives who were already worried about the future of their party. Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a campaign-savvy conservative, wants the GOP focused on refurbishing its image rather than conducting kamikaze missions. “Let’s go win some elections,” Cole tells GOP voters.

Just one in four Americans say they believe Republicans in Congress are working with Obama, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll. More than seven of every 10 voters disapprove of the way Republican lawmakers are doing their job.

Shutting down the government and threatening the nation’s credit can only hurt the Republican Party’s branding crisis. The strange thing is that ObamaCare could be a good issue for the GOP. It is an unpopular law freighted with complexity. Successful implementation requires precision from an Obama team that has proved itself weak on the nitty-gritty of governing.

One could argue that the GOP is fighting ObamaCare at its peak strength — prior to implementation. Why not wait for it to go into effect, seize on the flaws and, as Cole says, win some elections?

Obama and his party won’t emerge from a shutdown or debt crisis unscathed. For starters, the president of the United States is the living symbol of our government and thus receives undue credit when things are going well and outsized blame when they’re not.

Second, voters want Obama to work with Republicans — or at least try. The president is seen by just half of Americans as trying to work with GOP lawmakers, according to the New York Times/CBS News poll.

Remember the central promise of Obama’s presidency: He will change the culture of Washington. What happened? Obama has not only been taken hostage by the worst of Washington, gridlock and pettiness, but he seems to be suffering from Stockholm syndrome. His criticism of the GOP last week was as petulant as any GOP talking point. While announcing historic negotiations with Iran, a regime that sponsors terrorism, Obama said he wouldn’t bargain with the GOP.

Reaching out to rivals doesn’t mean capitulating on ObamaCare. It does mean swallowing his pride, listening and helping the GOP find a way out of the box they’ve built for themselves. Everybody gets hurt when he cloisters himself off from the dirty process.

Obama’s job-approval numbers are already slipping. For the first time in months, more voters disapprove of his performance than approve. Two-thirds of Americans think the country is on the wrong track. A government cataclysm this month will heighten voters’ anxiety and Obama’s jeopardy.

The salt in voters’ wounds is that this fight does not directly address their biggest issue, jobs. It also is not about the nation’s long-term, entitlement-fed debt, an existential issue both parties stopped trying to solve.

Where does all this lead beyond the next election cycle or two? Nobody knows, but the best place to look for answers is within the Millennial Generation, the nation’s rising leaders and voters. Last month, in a long essay on Millennials (The Outsiders: How Can Millennials Change Washington If They Hate It?), I concluded that their revolutionary view of government and politics points toward two possible outcomes.

They might opt out of Washington, which leads us to some dark places. More likely, they will blow up Washington (“disruption” is the tech-inspired term they use), and build something better outside the current two-party dysfunction.

Millennials don’t fit neatly into either the Democratic or Republican parties. They are highly empowered, impatient and disgusted with politics today.

“This tension — two parties thinking they are in the trenches dueling it out, and a burgeoning generation who reject trench warfare altogether — is, for me, the key,” said Michelle Diggles, a senior policy adviser at the Democratic think-tank Third Way and an expert in demographics and generational politics. “Washington doesn’t get that change isn’t just a slogan. It’s about to become a reality.”

“Neither party,” she said, “gets what’s coming down the pike.”

What happens in Washington this month might make a Millennial Revolution all the more likely.

Ron Fournier is national correspondent and editorial director at National Journal. Excerpted with permission from nationaljournal.com.